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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23446213">until the blue ocean turns green</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravitational/pseuds/gravitational'>gravitational</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>blue waters verse [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, merman au</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 05:53:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,322</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23446213</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravitational/pseuds/gravitational</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a man with golden eyes who sits beside Jaskier’s sea sometimes.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>blue waters verse [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686700</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>527</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Best Across Fandoms, The Witcher - Various Alternate Universes</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. one</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>"Gray Funnel Line" - The Longest Johns</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s a man with golden eyes who sits beside Jaskier’s sea sometimes.</p><p>His hair is the silver of the seafoam, and it glows in the moonlight, when it isn’t made red with blood.</p><p>It’s red with blood quite often.</p><p>His eyes are like the coastal wolves’, bright and cunning.</p><p>Sometimes they’re black.</p><p>He comes to the shoreline now and then, at least once or twice in a moon cycle.</p><p>When he comes, he sits on a fallen tree, one that Jaskier remembers being struck by lightning many cycles before. Half of it is charred black, and the rest is saltwater pale, gnarled with age.</p><p>He sits on the fallen rock, and he merely… sits. Jaskier watches him from behind a rock far out in the water, watches him watch the waves.</p><p>The sea is usually calm, only ever riled by storms. Jaskier suspects that’s part of why he enjoys watching.</p><p>The sea isn’t fickle and upset like rivers and streams, and it’s a sight prettier than lakes, Jaskier likes to think.</p><p>Not that he’s seen many lakes - it’s hard to get to them. Rivers have a habit of becoming too narrow or shallow before he can reach a lake, so he’s stuck with tales from the gulls.</p><p>It’s from the gulls that Jaskier learns more of the man.</p><p>He learns that his name is Geralt, and that he rides a horse he calls Roach.</p><p>He learns that Geralt kills creatures like him for coin.</p><p>Jaskier knows coin - he’s heard travelers on the shore talking about it, sailors above water talking about it… the gulls tell him it’s currency, like the seashells where he comes from.</p><p>The gulls tell him that humans love coin, and Jaskier thinks them foolish for it, because the most seashells can buy down below is passage from one sea to the next, only sometimes the harpies and the selkies don’t honor the toll, and they sic a shark on you, and you make it away bleeding and poor, without ever getting where you meant to go, and you’re alive, but you’re missing half a fin off your beautiful, beautiful tail - </p><p>Well.</p><p>The gulls tell him the man is something called a witcher, and they tell him he’s right - the witcher always looks sad.</p><p>- - </p><p>Jaskier isn’t sure how many cylces pass with Geralt sitting at his shoreline.</p><p>“Months,” the gulls correct him, over and over, but Jaskier tells them, quite flippantly, that the merfolk measure by the moon, and they ruffle their feathers, and squawk at him but give up quickly enough.</p><p>Geralt comes to his shore wounded one night.</p><p>It’s the scent of blood that draws Jaskier up from the sea floor, away from the counting of his shells (he hopes, perhaps, he can buy his way up the northern river, the one guarded by the meanest of the sirens and the toughest of the sharks, and follow Geralt into the mainland).</p><p>He’s made a habit of lingering close to the shore when nightfall draws near, just in case his witcher comes.</p><p>Tonight, his witcher is hurt.</p><p>Watching from behind his stone, Jaskier feels his heart ache at the sight.</p><p>Geralt moves with caution, with obvious care, and he moves with one hand pressed to his side, and in the moonlight, Jaskier sees, quite clearly, the blood on his beautiful hands.</p><p>His heart <i>aches.</i></p><p>Geralt remains for hours, staring out at the waves. Jaskier isn’t even sure he knows what his gaze is upon - he looks lost, and he looks sad.</p><p>He always looks sad.</p><p>--</p><p>Nearly a year passes before the sadness begins to fade.</p><p>“He’s in love,” proclaim the gulls, and something within Jaskier <i>snarls.</i> “He’s met a woman.”</p><p>Primarily, Jaskire believes them wrong.</p><p>The sadness is merely fading - it isn’t gone.</p><p>--</p><p>Two cycles later, Jaskier has enough for the northern river toll.</p><p>He has enough, and the harpies take the shells he hands them in the seaweed bundle, and he shudders at the sight of their wicked talons and human faces, and he swims past them as they sneer.</p><p>The gulls, flying overhead, keep watch.</p><p>Harpies aren’t known to honor their word, and the sharks circling down below look awfully hungry.</p><p>He makes it less than a ship’s length ahead before he feels the water shift, feels it ripple with the motion of something drawing near - drawing near too fast for him to get away.</p><p>--</p><p>He makes it out alive.</p><p>Only barely.</p><p>His tail is bitten deep, meat exposed, nearly to the bone. The fins along the sides are torn, and the fan at the end, the beautiful fan he’s adored his entire lifetime, is ragged now, ragged and bloody and raw.</p><p>Deep blue scales are flaking off his tail and arms, glistening as they drift away.</p><p>If his kind could cry, Jaskier’s tears would be blending with his blood in the water.</p><p>He bleeds silver, like the unicorns of the land.</p><p>Coiled into the side of his stone below the sea, Jaskier watches as it rises to the surface, glistening there in the moonlight. It clouds up and fades away soon, and yet, still he bleeds.</p><p>Geralt does not come that night, nor the next.</p><p>Still he bleeds.</p><p>--</p><p>Jaskier grows weak.</p><p>Without food to eat or plants to bind his tail, he bleeds, and he grows weak.</p><p>He bleeds, and he grows weak, and his grip on the rock is lost.</p><p>The sea fades to black as he drifts upward, toward the moon hanging low in the sky.</p><p>His heart aches.</p><p>--</p><p>He wakes up numb.</p><p>He wakes up numb, with the night air on his skin.</p><p>He wakes up numb, and he wakes up with the night air on his skin, and he wakes up with a hand on his chest.</p><p>Jaskier's world is foggy when he opens his eyes, but he manages it regardless, and for a moment, he only stares, because that's...</p><p>That's a pair of eyes overhead, and they're - </p><p>they're yellow.</p><p>They're yellow, and they're sad.</p><p>"Geralt?" he breathes, and those sad, sad eyes go wide...</p><p>... and Jaskier sinks back into darkness, Geralt's voice deep and rough and low and like home in his ears.</p><p>
  <i>"How?"</i>
</p><p>--</p><p>He wakes up next when the sun is in the sky.</p><p>This time, he can feel water lapping against his sides, cool and comforting and familiar.</p><p>He breathes in deep, opens his eyes and blinks at the glare of the day.</p><p>It takes a moment for the rest of his senses to return.</p><p>He's resting in a little tide pool, deep enough to submerge his tail, his lower torso. Another second passes before he realizes he's laid across one of the rocks at the pool's edge, head propped on his folded arms. There's a damp towel laid across his back, lessening the heat of the sun.</p><p>Jaskier groans as he tries to move, pushing himself up on his arms to glance around. He knows this tide pool - it's not that far from where he surfaces to observe his witcher at night. Confusion knots his brow when he glances down and sees what appears to be an animal hide laid across the rock, cushioning his slumber.</p><p>"Don't move too much."</p><p>He jerks in ill-concealed surprise, finally looking up, and - </p><p>he goes still.</p><p>Geralt is seated nearby, crosslegged on a mostly-flat rock at the outer edge of the tide pool. He's watching him, golden eyes locked with deep blue, and Jaskier cannot breathe.</p><p>He can't breathe, because he is <i>beautiful.</i></p><p>"What attacked you?" asks the witcher, and he speaks softly, as though he's trying to keep the merman from shying away from - from <i>him,</i> from the most beautiful thing Jaskier has ever seen.</p><p>Jaskier sucks in a breath, feels the gills along his throat tremble, looks past Geralt to where his red mare is standing still in the sand. "Sharks," he replies at last.</p><p>Geralt hums, low, and that's that. He moves with a heavy sigh, motioning for Jaskier to look back, down at his tail.</p><p>He obeys.</p><p>His tail is bound in white cloth, stained murky platinum with his blood. Geralt had taken obvious care, binding the fins along the sides as gently as possible. Jaskier moves cautiously, giving his tail an experimental sway, and he grimaces at the pain, but it lets him look at the fan at the end, resting in the sand.</p><p>Still ruined.</p><p>"There's nothing I can do," comes Geralt's voice, and he sounds apologetically resigned. Jaskier nods, tries not to let his face fall. "I treated everything with potions, the wounds should heal in time - they'll scar, and I'm afraid the fins might not regrow, but you won't feel the damage. Your, ah... the fan, though..."</p><p>Jaskier is having trouble following along, the majority of his attention devoted to the <i>sound</i> of Geralt's voice, rather than the words.</p><p>He catches just enough to know that his fan is lost.</p><p>Part of him - that vain, bitter part - hurts with the knowledge.</p><p>"Thank you," he says at last, his voice just as soft.</p><p>Geralt is quiet, but when Jaskier looks back at him, he nods, golden eyes on his tail.</p><p>--</p><p>Geralt comes back for him every day for - four, five months?</p><p>(Geralt calls them months, like the gulls, and so, finally, Jaskier gave up.)</p><p>Jaskier stays in the tide pool for the first bit of that time.</p><p>Eventually, Geralt begins to lift him from the stony area, sets him down in the ocean proper, lets him sink below and soak.</p><p>He keeps his arms around him the entire time, refusing to let him strain his tail.</p><p>When Geralt returns him to the tide pool, he always re-soaks the cloth draped over him, the deer hide laid out beneath him, and offers whatever food he's brought along.</p><p>Human food is... intriguing.</p><p>Jaskier develops quite the taste for <i>rabbit.</i></p><p>Every couple of days, Geralt changes out the bandages, reapplies the potions he carries hanging off a belt.</p><p>It's very nearly maddening, Geralt's touch so gentle and caring on his scales.</p><p>Never once does he touch his skin, not with his palms.</p><p>Only ever with his arms, strong and torturous around his chest to support him in the shallows.</p><p>Jaskier yearns for his touch.</p><p>--</p><p>Geralt tells him stories, every day.</p><p>At first, it's extremely grudging.</p><p>Jaskier coaxes tales of slaying selkiemore and drowners and cockatrice and banshees from his witcher, and for the first couple of weeks, it's an agonizing process.</p><p>Geralt doesn't like talking about himself.</p><p>When Jaskier reminds him that he's the only source of entertainment available to a virtually bedridden merman, he becomes less reluctant.</p><p>A little.</p><p>One day, Jaskier asks if he's ever slain merfolk.</p><p>Geralt doesn't answer at first. He merely looks at him, and there's sadness in his eyes, just as profound as ever.</p><p>He nearly laughs - a low, weary exhale - and turns his head away.</p><p>"I won't kill you," is all he says, at last.</p><p>Jaskier believes him.</p><p>--</p><p>They play games, sometimes.</p><p>Well, Jaskier invents the games, and Geralt tolerates them, at best.</p><p>They play "count the seagulls" and "hide the seashell" and "braid your hair," only it's difficult to count the gulls when they always fly away in a rush as soon as they get wind of the fun, and there's only so many places to hide the seashell where Jaskier can reach it from his confinement, and Geralt's hair is the only hair long enough to braid, and he takes it with...</p><p>With...</p><p>Well.</p><p>He takes it.</p><p>Jaskier sings to him, most of the time.</p><p>He sings him the songs of his kind, and he sings him the songs he's heard from the sailors going by above, and he sings him the songs he's learned from the travelers at his shore.</p><p>Geralt teaches him some of his own kind - well, the human kind.</p><p>Drinking songs, he calls them.</p><p>Jaskier decides he loves them.</p><p>--</p><p>Geralt tells him about the woman, eventually.</p><p>Her name is Yennefer, and Jaskier loathes her immediately.</p><p>She's a sorceress - something like the sea witches Jaskier's kind fears.</p><p>They met while Geralt was after a djinn - he won't explain why, not even when Jaskier cocks his head to the side and causes Geralt to derail in an attempt to explain. He doesn't even notice that Jaskier is stalling.</p><p>One day, Jaskier asks if he loves her.</p><p>Geralt doesn't answer, not then.</p><p>Two days later, out of nowhere, Jaskier cradled in his arms so he can enjoy the sea, he says, "No. I don't."</p><p>Jaskier decides he loves him.</p><p>--</p><p>It's a long while before Geralt removes the bandages to reveal healed wounds.</p><p>There's raised lines of new flesh where there had once been deep gouges, and Jaskier's scales have grown back a brighter, truer blue, standing out against the deep shade of the rest.</p><p>The fins are intact, only the smallest notches in the edges indicating their trauma.</p><p>As for the fan, the wide, flowing, beautiful, gossamer, ghostly fan Jaskier had prided himself upon his entire life...</p><p>The edges of the bites are healed, no longer raw and sensitive to the sting of the sea, but the bites themselves are still apparent.</p><p>His fan is ruined.</p><p>Laying there in the tide pool, propped on his elbows to survey his tail, Jaskier wishes he could cry.</p><p>He lifts his tail, thwacks it against the water, feels no remorse when he splashes Geralt in the process.</p><p>Geralt doesn't seem to care.</p><p>Not about the water, at least.</p><p>It's as Jaskier's about to hit the surface once more that Geralt reaches for him, props a hand against the backside of his tail, holds him firm and meets his gaze.</p><p>Jaskier goes still.</p><p>His chest is heaving, fear and shame and pain clogging his throat, and he wishes he could cry, but he can't, and so he doesn't.</p><p>He stares back at Geralt, stares back at those wolf-gold eyes, stares at him until he lets his tail go slack. The weight of it is no doubt immense, but Geralt supports it like nothing, lays it down gently in the water and sets his hand on the underside instead.</p><p>"I'm sorry," he says aloud, smoothing his hand along his scales, down and down and down until he's tracing along the edges of the fan, of the ruined fan, once Jaskier's pride and joy... he traces the edges, and he watches his own hand, and he says, "I tried to save it."</p><p>Jaskier doesn't answer.</p><p>He's too busy trying to breathe.</p><p>--</p><p>Geralt sets him back in the sea that night, tells him to try swimming close to shore, stick close by, rest if he needs, he'll be back the next day...</p><p>Jaskier merely nods.</p><p>When Geralt pulls away, his fingertips graze across Jaskier's skin, across the point where scales fade into flesh along the v of his waist.</p><p>He shudders.</p><p>Geralt goes rigid, and yet he doesn't say a word.</p><p>He eases him into the sea, says goodnight, waits on horseback until Jaskier dips below the surface and doesn't rise again to leave.</p><p>Jaskier comes back when his scent has worn thin.</p><p>He floats there, near the tide pool, until his newfound strength begins to wane.</p><p>He falls asleep resting against the stones at the rim of the tide pool, Geralt's scent hanging heavy in the air.</p><p>--</p><p>Geralt doesn't come back until nightfall the next day, but he brings food, so Jaskier can't fault him.</p><p>His tail isn't powerful enough yet to drive him deep below and back home just yet, and the seaweed and crustaceans near the shore are nowhere near as satisfying.</p><p>Geralt sits crosslegged in the sand, watches with attentive eyes as Jaskier ducks and dives and whirls...</p><p>... as Jaskier shows off, twists and arches and writhes, lets what's left of his fan splay in the water in the closest thing to a mating dance he's ever fucking done, and he's always winded by the time he surfaces again, and Geralt...</p><p>... Geralt doesn't care.</p><p>He makes Jaskier come closer, wades out far enough to feel over his tail, over his fins, making sure they aren't strained and raw and split open.</p><p>They aren't, but maybe Jaskier plays up his exertion, if for nothing else than to have Geralt carry him back into the tide pool, sit down at the edge and knead into the muscles of his tail until it takes everything within him not to moan aloud.</p><p>--</p><p>This continues for another week.</p><p>Geralt is always watchful, golden eyes following Jaskier through the water so he doesn't grow weak, and at the end of every night, he carries him to the pool, massages the nonexistent ache from his tail and lets Jaskier sing.</p><p>One night, Jaskier asks if he likes his singing.</p><p>His witcher looks him in the eyes then, just for a moment, and looks away, the faintest of smiles on his face.</p><p>He doesn't answer, but Jaskier gloats regardless.</p><p>--</p><p>One night, Geralt comes looking... almost happy.</p><p>He tells Jaskier he's found Yennefer again.</p><p>(Jaskier didn't realize that she was lost, let alone worthy of finding.)</p><p>She's moved on, living in another town, in another kingdom. Geralt had gotten word from a traveling merchant, one he's known for years.</p><p>Jaskier should be happy for him.</p><p>He knows he should.</p><p>He knows this, and yet, when Geralt looks at him more closely, asks him what's wrong, he spits out, "Do you love her?"</p><p>Geralt goes still.</p><p>He's standing at the very edge of the tide, arms crossed.</p><p>Jaskier is floating just far enough out that the sand brushes his chest when he settles lower in the water, close enough to talk to his witcher with ease.</p><p>"Do you love her?" he repeats.</p><p>Geralt's jaw tightens, and he starts to speak, and when he does, it's a low and frustrated snarl.</p><p>"I knew her first."</p><p>Jaskier's tail hits the surface of the water with enough force to send a ripple through the current, to send a wave toward the shore, lapping at Geralt's boots.</p><p>"Jaskier, you can't leave the water, you <i>know</i> you can't - "</p><p>"There <i>has</i> to be a way, you see magic all day long, Geralt - "</p><p>"I'm not taking you from your home - "</p><p>"I haven't seen my home in <i>months!"</i> he nearly screams, and his voice is raw and wrecked and honest, and it hurts to yell, and it hurts to breathe, and, "I haven't gone back below since I met you, Geralt, you <i>have</i> to know that, you <i>are</i> my home!"</p><p>Geralt falls silent then.</p><p>Jaskier's voice gives out as he cuts himself off, and he falls quiet, and he waits, and he trembles there in the water, his witcher out of reach.</p><p>When Geralt speaks again, it's with his eyes averted, and he sounds...</p><p>"No. I don't love her, but I can't love you."</p><p>He turns away, and Jaskier starts to protest, to call out, to beg for him to stay - but his throat is dry, and so he says nothing.</p><p>He stays there, motionless in the water, and watches as Geralt mounts up on his mare and walks away.</p><p>He stays there until the sun is rising in the eastern sky.</p><p>He stays there until the daylight wears away at his skin and his head is pounding with the atmospheric heat.</p><p>He stays there until he grows weak.</p><p>He grows weak, and he turns away, sinks below the surface, dives down, down, down... down until the water is dark and he doesn't know if the shadows just beyond his reach are creatures come to kill or merely rock formations lurking in the void.</p><p>His heart aches, and he wishes he could cry.</p><p>--</p><p>The gulls tell him Geralt has moved on, farther north.</p><p>They tell him he's accompanied by a woman with hair as black as the abyss, a woman who heals his wounds with magic and keeps him warm at night.</p><p>Jaskier looks to the ruined fan at the end of his tail, to the fresh and brighter scales that mark Geralt's care.</p><p>He looks to the ruined fan, and he doesn't say a word.</p><p>--</p><p>The gulls tell him Geralt travels alone now.</p><p>They tell him that he left the woman in a kingdom called Cintra, and they tell him he's angry now, angry and just as sorrowful as ever.</p><p>Some bitter part of his heart is glad.</p><p>--</p><p>They tell him they've lost track of Geralt.</p><p>It's been years.</p><p>--</p><p>It's been years, and still, Jaskier waits close to the shore.</p><p>Geralt's scent has long since worn off the stones where they used to sit together, where they used to talk and laugh and sing and play... where Jaskier fell for the man with wolf-gold eyes and seafoam-pale hair.</p><p>His heart aches.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. two</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It's been years since Geralt left the merman alone by the shore.</p><p>Two, three?</p><p>He doesn't know.</p><p>Nearly six months since he left Yennefer behind.</p><p>She was too much, too soon... too intense.</p><p>They were doomed from the start.</p><p>Maybe... maybe, he admits, late at night when it's just him alone in his head, he should have stayed by the sea.</p><p>Maybe he should have stayed with Jaskier.</p><p>--</p><p>He travels.</p><p>He goes north.</p><p>He goes north, and he goes east, and he goes west.</p><p>Anywhere but south to the seas.</p><p>--</p><p>He takes contract after contract, kills creatures for peasants and nobility alike... never lays a hand upon a human, not again.</p><p>Every drop of blood he spills, he remembers the glistening silver of Jaskier's. He remembers how it laid upon the surface like liquid moonlight, how it soaked into the bandages and turned them a murky platinum...</p><p>Every time he meets the gaze of a monster, he thanks the gods that it isn't Jaskier's, that his merman isn't at the point of his sword.</p><p>Every time he makes camp near the river, he watches the water flow, and he wishes it were deep and rolling, capped with foam.</p><p>--</p><p>Five years pass, and then ten.</p><p>Time is kind to his type, his only claim to age an addition smattering of scars across his body, torn into his flesh by blades or teeth or claws.</p><p>There is one blessing time continues to withhold, however...</p><p>He has not yet managed to forget.</p><p>--</p><p>He sleeps with countless women, and yet, never with a man.</p><p>He tries, once - lets a young, pretty-eyed thing woo him with his words, gets as far as setting his teeth to the side of his throat, hands beneath his shirt and thigh between his legs...</p><p>... and the image of deep blue eyes and deeper scales flashes through his head, and bright, bright silver blood.</p><p>He draws away, steps back... leaves the man behind the tavern, mounts up on Roach, leaves the town he's only barely gotten to know and leaves it all behind.</p><p>That night, he doesn't sleep.</p><p>Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Jaskier floating in the sea.</p><p>--</p><p>It's when he sees the scales of sea things at a market that fear clogs his throat.</p><p>Harpy scales, selkie scales, merfolk scales... blacks and grays and greens and golds, and blues - bright blues, dark blues, ocean blues, sky blues...</p><p>He confronts the man running the stall, demands to know where - and <i>why.</i></p><p>"They're quite coveted for jewelry nowadays," is the simple response, and there's fear in the man's eyes when Geralt looms closer. "I'm not the, ah, the collector, I don't hunt the things - I just sell them and split the profit - "</p><p>"Split it with who?" he growls, and he knows, almost before the answer comes...</p><p>"Why, the witcher, of course."</p><p>--</p><p>Months pass.</p><p>Slowly, he wanders south, along mountain trails and through little villages he hasn't seen in years, along the outskirts of kingdoms and through valleys and forests...</p><p>He sees the scales in nearly every market, and in the richer regions, he sees them around the necks of women, at the fastenings of men.</p><p>As time goes on, he realizes it's not just scales - there's teeth and claws, too, and feathers, and as Geralt rides on through or walks on by, he realizes the witcher is killing not for contracts, but for sport.</p><p>It sickens him to imagine.</p><p>Worse, however, is the nagging voice at the back of his head, the one that urges him to try and remember the exact shade of...</p><p>No.</p><p>--</p><p>Geralt loses track of time again, as he often does now. With more than a century of his life beneath his belt, the years feel more like months sometimes.</p><p><i>Cycles,</i> as Jaskier would have said.</p><p>He's begun to think like that with increasing frequency, evaluating things from the merman's eyes... he wonders what Jaskier knew of the human realm before he met the witcher.</p><p>Wonders if he's found another human to tell him of tavern songs.</p><p>--</p><p>The air grows salty as he draws further south.</p><p>It feels... it feels like returning to a home he never truly had.</p><p>To a love he never allowed.</p><p>--</p><p>He awakens from a dream one night, a nightmare... awakens from the vision of Jaskier, split and flayed open on the shore, his beautiful, beautiful tail sawed off and skinned bare, his scales shorn off and cleaned and sent to be draped about the neck of a queen.</p><p>He's barely been asleep for an hour, yet if it weren't for Roach's weariness, he would have taken to the road again immediately.</p><p>--</p><p>Things begin to look familiar, though changed with the passage of time.</p><p>He remembers this tree, that stone... remembers when that husk of a farmhouse was once active and lively, remembers when this town was small, little more than houses.</p><p>He stops at the new tavern, buys himself some ale.</p><p>It's here that he learns the witcher has all but set up camp along the shore, where the rivers feed into the sea.</p><p>Geralt's stomach churns at the thought.</p><p>He pushes Roach hard the next day, urges her on, on, on...</p><p>--</p><p>It's nightfall when he reaches the edge of the sea.</p><p>The water is dark and calm, but there's clouds upon the horizon, clouds that roil with lightning and threaten to mask the crescent moon overhead.</p><p>Geralt leaves Roach tied to the fallen tree. It's splintered with age, no longer sturdy enough to support his weight. She shies from the wood, and it's no wonder - it's splashed with platinum blood, dried into the bark.</p><p>The air reeks of death. Coppery blood blends with salt and fish and sand, and Geralt snarls beneath his breath as he paces along the water's edge.</p><p>He comes to the tide pool before long.</p><p>Much the same as always, full of life, of clear and gentle water that sloshes when the tide eases in. Standing at its edge, Geralt remembers the deer hide he'd spread across the stones, the cloths he'd draped upon Jaskier's back.</p><p>His gaze wanders back to the sea.</p><p>As clear as ever, he can see Jaskier floating just past the shallows, testing the strength of his newly-healed tail, calling the songs of the sea to Geralt and laughing aloud at his bewildered stare.</p><p>The faintest of smiles tugs at Geralt's lips, but it's dashed away an instant later by the memory of that silver cloud of blood, drifting upon the surface, calling his attention to the body out in the water that night long ago.</p><p>He thanks the gods above that he wasn't greeted by the same tableau tonight.</p><p>That doesn't mean he won't encounter it soon.</p><p>Geralt heaves a quiet sigh, turns to look back at Roach, who's watching him with those soft, wise eyes. "Hopeless?" he half-asks, his voice low.</p><p>She whickers in response, and he turns his gaze back to the water.</p><p>--</p><p>Two weeks pass.</p><p>He comes across no other signs of the witcher, but, as he learned long ago, invisible demons are no less a threat than those that you can see, hear, feel.</p><p>Then again, he supposes he <i>can</i> see, sense, touch the evidence of the other witcher... he sees the blood splashed across the driftwood and stones. He hears the way the shore is all but silent except for the lapping of the waves, even the gulls overhead scarce. He feels the way every living thing seems to have drawn back in fear.</p><p>He hates it in a way that he cannot describe.</p><p>He's seen horrific things - battlefields sprayed with blood and brains, homes torn apart by violence, corpses left hanging half-eaten from trees or mountain ledges, bits of rotting flesh on the teeth of the creatures he's meant to kill - and yet, not in his century-odd of living has he ever encountered such a dreadful aura, such an air of gloom.</p><p>Distantly, he knows that it's because of the fear roiling deep within his chest, a constant ache that refuses to ease away. He sets up camp less than a half-mile from the sea, where the wind will waft the scent of blood in his direction, should anything... go awry.</p><p>For a while, nothing happens.</p><p>The days pass without event, and the nights, much the same.</p><p>--</p><p>It's about three days later that he begins to notice the gulls are returning.</p><p>At first, it's just a couple, cruising along overhead, their calls rare and quiet, as though they know better than to speak too loudly.</p><p>Later in the afternoon, as Geralt paces along the shoreline where he'd met Jaskier all those years ago, he notices more of them, perched upon a rock that crests above the sea a short distance out. The sight is oddly familiar, enough to jog Geralt's memory. He goes still, frowning toward the stone.</p><p>He doesn't think he's imagining the way the gulls are staring at him, tilting their heads, cawing between themselves.</p><p>It's unusual, to be frank, but...</p><p>... nothing comes of it that day.</p><p>--</p><p>The next day, there are more. A lot more.</p><p>One awakens him in the late evening by lighting upon a branch near his camp and squawking loud enough to wake the goddamn dead.</p><p>Geralt jerks upright with haste, staring at the bird in the sort of confusion he usually reserves for sorceresses and their type.</p><p>Realization strikes him a moment later, and he scrambles to his feet. Roach is already snorting her protest before he even approaches her. She seems far, far less than impressed to be saddled up and nudged into a trot all thanks to the appearance of a single gull, but Geralt pays her disgruntled sounds no mind, for a memory has risen to the surface...</p><p>... the memory of his merman, rambling on and on about the stories the gulls told him.</p><p>As soon as it sees Geralt is in motion, the gull springs into flight, rising up through the trees into the open air above. Geralt catches enough of a glimpse to track it westward; he's quick to spur Roach along, heart caught in his throat.</p><p>It's easier to follow the gull once they're beyond the trees, once it leads them out to the shoreline. It's now that the gull is joined by two - three - more, all circling impatiently then flying on ahead while Roach finds steady footing in the sand.</p><p>Geralt imagines they've gone nearly a mile before, suddenly, the wind shifts, and he's hit with - </p><p>with - </p><p>with the stench of <i>blood,</i> hot and wet and not... not red, no, silver, unicorn silver, a cloyingly sweet scent that bites the roof of Geralt's mouth when it settles there, horrific in its familiarity.</p><p>No longer minding the gulls above, he kicks his mare into a canter, praying to the whole damn pantheon that he isn't too late.</p><p>--</p><p>The moon is high overhead when he finally catches sight of the bleeding thing.</p><p>There's a fishing net halfway submerged in the shallows, one end tangled and tethered amongst the mess of rocks and logs on the sand. It's clear that the net was hauled ashore once it was full... hauled ashore so its contents would dehydrate and rot away in the heat of the day.</p><p>As Geralt draws near, he slows Roach to a walk, and then to a halt, his heart rising and catching in his throat.</p><p>Through the strands of the net, he can see pale skin and deep, deep blue scales.</p><p>He's out of the saddle and in motion almost before he realizes it, calling Jaskier's name, and the creature tangled in the net - they stir, they thrash, they try to pull away - </p><p>Geralt drops to his knees beside the mess of rope and blood and flaked-off scales, fumbling to pull his dagger from its home at his belt. "Jaskier," he says, and then, louder, when dazed blue eyes meet his own, "it's me, I'm here, you're - don't try to move, I don't want you hurt - "</p><p>"You came," croaks a familiar voice, weakened with illness, laden with relief. "You - I thought you were gone..."</p><p>"The gulls led me to you," was Geralt's simple response; he was frozen now, staring at - at all of it, trying to find the weak points in the rope, the points where he could cut through without hurting his siren any more than he already had. "I'm - I'm sorry, Jaskier, I should have come back before."</p><p>His merman shakes his head, or tries to, and fuck, the rope is digging into his face, and Geralt's heart fucking aches with the sight. "Don't blame yourself," he mumbles. "Don't."</p><p>All Geralt can do is look at him, look at him and try to fucking breathe.</p><p>It's been years since he's let himself cry, but he thinks he might now.</p><p>He shakes himself into motion with a muffled curse, grabs for the loosest part of the rope that he can see and - and <i>tries</i> to cut through, he fucking tries, but there's more resistance than he expects, and it's then that he realizes the rope is glinting with silver - <i>silver for monsters</i> - and the anger that rises in his chest gives him the strength to slice through the metal strands.</p><p>Jaskier, to his credit, lays still as Geralt reaches, grabs, pulls, cuts - shows no sign of fear - and Geralt breathes in, forces himself to listen, feels dread settle in his stomach when he realizes the merman's pulse is weak, so weak... when he realizes his merman is dying.</p><p>"Stay awake," Geralt grits out, and he knows he sounds harsh, he sounds cruel, but - but he doesn't know how else to sound, not when he thinks he may have to scare death off his own goddamn self, just to keep his mermaid safe. "Stay awake, Jaskier..."</p><p>It becomes a fucking mantra, one he repeats over and over again as he cuts the net apart, as he slices through what feels like fucking miles of silver thread, careful - <i>so</i> careful - not to cut into lacerated skin or shaved-off scales. It feels like a fucking eternity before the last of the net falls away and Geralt can breathe again, can sheathe his dagger in a hurry and look Jaskier over.</p><p>His anger returns tenfold as he takes him in.</p><p>The merman is badly sunburnt, bright and horrific red, a salmon shade joined by deep silver and deeper gray where he's bleeding and has bled. A closer look tells Geralt that the silver has done a fine job of eating into his skin in some places. As for his tail, well... it's easy to tell that it'll be marred by quite a few new scars, and the fan at the end is bordering on ruined.</p><p>"I'm sorry," says Geralt at last.</p><p>He's met with silence, and fear clogs his throat as he looks up to Jaskier's face.</p><p>Jaskier is merely... he's just <i>watching</i> him, those deep blue eyes glazed and unfocused.</p><p>He looks half-dead already, and yet, despite that - despite the blood on his skin - he looks... trusting.</p><p>Geralt can't quite wrap his head around that.</p><p>"Stay awake," he says again, reaching beneath the merman - <i>just like years before</i> - and lifting him with arms that want to shake despite his best efforts to the contrary. "Let me get you to the water..."</p><p>Jaskier gives a quiet sound in reply, and he tips his head to the side, resting against Geralt entirely even though he <i>whines</i> with pain. "They told me a witcher was nearby," he says, hoarse. "I thought... I thought it was you."</p><p>Anger wells up yet again - anger, and hate, and malice, and... and remorse.</p><p>
  <i>Guilt.</i>
</p><p>He heaves a sigh as he carries his merman to the water's edge, wading into the shallows. "I'm sorry," he murmurs. "I'm going to set you down for a minute so you can cool off... I have potions in my saddlebag."</p><p>The other man doesn't respond, and Geralt fights the fear clenched tight about his heart. He kneels down, easing Jaskier into the water, and he can't help but grimace at the pitiful little sound of pain the sting of salt earns. "I'm sorry," says the witcher again.</p><p>He's as gentle as he's ever been as he sets the merman down in the shallows, eyes on Jaskier's tail as it rests limply upon the shifting sands. Jaskier, of course, offers no resistance, merely tenses and huffs when Geralt slips his arms out from beneath him. He dips his head back to submerge his face, and Geralt watches the subtle gills along his throat flex as he readjusts. It brings relief, almost, knowing that maybe he'll survive.</p><p>Geralt kneels there in the sands for... gods, he isn't sure how many minutes pass before Jaskier finally stirs again, opening his eyes and blinking up at Geralt from where he's only barely floating above the seafloor. He's almost limp, laying on his side, less-lacerated shoulder supporting him, tail motionless and arms halfheartedly folded.</p><p>It... hurts to see.</p><p>"I'm going to go get the potions," Geralt says, voice a bit louder than normal; he knows Jaskier can hear him. "Focus on resting."</p><p>The merman, once again, doesn't react, and Geralt tries to ignore the stab of pain that goes through his gut. He stands with a sigh, returning to Roach, who has been observing everything in telling silence. She stands patiently as he rummages through her saddlebags; he keeps the potions safe for humans and other non-witcher beings here, not wanting to clog up his own belts and pockets with things he can't grab and down in a heartbeat.</p><p>He picks out a vial full of a deep green liquid, one that glistens in the sunlight as he walks back into the gently-rolling water. Jaskier twists over onto his front when Geralt nears, and it's obvious the motion causes him pain; his tail convulses briefly, and his face contorts, but he rests his elbows on the sand to lift his head from the water regardless. "Can you drink?" Geralt asks.</p><p>Jaskier merely nods, watching him with an unreadable expression in those glossed-over eyes as Geralt kneels at his side once more. Deciding that's answer enough when Jaskier could well die before the sun rises, Geralt uncorks the vial, setting a gentle hand beneath Jaskier's chin to steady him as he tips the potion to his lips.</p><p>His eyes rake over the merman's body once more as he drinks, taking in the way his throat works, the deep and angry burns across his skin, the lacerations here and there...</p><p>
  <i>He won't survive, not like this.</i>
</p><p>Suddenly lost within that train of thought, Geralt goes still.</p><p>It isn't until Jaskier begins to cough and choke that he jolts himself back into the present, pulling the half-empty vial away from the merman's mouth and waiting until he's steadied out some before he says, "Jaskier, you... is there any safe spot nearby? Like the tide pool?"</p><p>Something like pain flashes through the merman's eyes, but it's not physical pain.</p><p>Geralt recognizes it all too well.</p><p>"I'm not going to leave you," he breaks in, before Jaskier can get a word out. "Not again. I need to get you somewhere safe so I can treat the wounds and so you can rest. That's all."</p><p>Jaskier hesitates, looks away; finally, he nods, saying quietly, "Further south along the shore, there should - there's a little lagoon..."</p><p>"How far away?"</p><p>"Around the next bend," he mumbles, and he sounds tired, so tired...</p><p>Geralt curses under his breath, saying as he reaches for him yet again, "Stay awake... just a little longer."</p><p>--</p><p>It's maybe a ten, fifteen minute ride along the shore and around the curve.</p><p>Geralt keeps Jaskier cradled in his arms, clucking to Roach and nudging her with his heels to keep her straight, but the mare knows what to do; she moves slowly, head steady and pace even, as if she knows just how important the extra weight on her back is.</p><p>The lagoon is small, barely any wider across than your average tavern, shut off from the ocean by bits of shore that stretched too far into the waters and refused to draw away. The inland forest has crept up close, heavy trees fading into palms near the water's edge, and it's...</p><p>Well, it's beautiful.</p><p>Even Geralt, halfway blinded by the panic that rises in his chest with the merman's every labored breath, has to admit it.</p><p>"We're here," he says aloud, soft, and Jaskier jumps, his eyes blinking open. "I'm going to set you in the water, okay?"</p><p>He isn't surprised when Jaskier doesn't react.</p><p>That doesn't make it any easier to bear.</p><p>Heaving a sigh, he adjusts his grip on the merman, swinging his leg over Roach's back and sliding to the ground in as smooth a movement as he can manage, bearing a couple hundred extra pounds in his arms.</p><p>Jaskier stays quiet as Geralt carries him to the lagoon, stays quiet as he's laid down in the clear and shallow water. He rests his body on the sands without being told, deep enough that he's submerged except for his head and shoulders when he props himself up once again. Geralt's hand brushes over one of the worst cuts when he draws back, and Jaskier winces, nearly whines - </p><p>"I'm sorry," Geralt says, low, and turns back to Roach. He comes back with another potion and a small vial of salve, one he's opening as he kneels at Jaskier's side. "I'll set up camp here, just inside the trees..."</p><p>"Don't stay for me," Jaskier interrupts, and it's the first thing he's said in quite a while, and it's so soft, so uncertain...</p><p>Geralt feels his heart break.</p><p>He shakes his head, dipping his hand into the salve and reaching beneath the water's surface to smooth it along Jaskier's sun-raw back. It's waterproof, or at least waterproof <i>enough,</i> so he has few qualms with this. "I'm staying," he says, just as soft. "I won't leave you again. I shouldn't have left to begin with."</p><p>The merman says nothing.</p><p>Geralt didn't expect him to.</p><p>--</p><p>It's difficult, those first few days.</p><p>Jaskier lacks the strength to move much on his own - to do anything beyond sinking below the surface and raising back up to drink whatever potion or plant concoction Geralt is offering.</p><p>Food, he says, nauseates him to even contemplate.</p><p>Geralt tries to hide how badly that thought scares him.</p><p>--</p><p>The fourth day, Jaskier begins to decline.</p><p>Despite Geralt's best efforts - despite countless fucking hours of sitting at the shore, of kneeling beside him in the water, of pouring every potion he thinks could <i>possibly</i> be safe down his throat - the merman is weak.</p><p>He is weak, and he is dying, and, well...</p><p>Geralt sees only one option.</p><p>It's a day's ride to the nearest town, but it's less than a half day to the mouth of the river the other witcher is said to be stationed alongside.</p><p>Leaving Jaskier with a quiet whisper of, "I swear to you, I'll return," and a kiss upon his forehead, he mounts up on Roach, and turns for the trees.</p><p>He prays to the whole fucking pantheon that things will be okay.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. three</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Geralt can smell blood on the air long before he catches sight of the witcher's camp - sharp, bitter, some of it fresh and some of it so stale he knows it's been sitting for days, weeks... possibly months.</p><p>Far too long.</p><p>Roach grows restless the closer they draw to the source of the stench; he soothes her with <i>axii,</i> murmurs low to her, even though the same unease is spreading through his own bones.</p><p>The very atmosphere feels as though it is recoiling from the presence of the other witcher, and Geralt isn't certain if the humming of the medallion at his breast is thanks to beasts lurking in the ocean at his left, or to the inhuman thing that has chosen to hunt and kill for sport.</p><p>He falls silent as the scent grows stronger; for some time now, he's been marking his path with the plume of smoke from a campfire on the horizon up ahead. Now, the source of it seems to be just around a bend in the shoreline up ahead, where the river that feeds into the ocean ends and the great blue expanse begins.</p><p>A strategic place to set up camp, he has to admit, if one intends to slaughter. Geralt has spent more years studying the beasts on land, but he knows enough about those beneath the sea to assume that, before, countless creatures would have come to this juncture to feed, as fish would congregate, bewildered by the saltwater.</p><p>It's easy hunting.</p><p>It's <i>cruel.</i></p><p>Roach suddenly shies beneath his weight, and Geralt realizes he had let <i>axii</i> falter in his distraction; he steadies her with both legs, a hand on the flat of her neck as he looks up onto the seagrass-covered hills to the side.</p><p>There's a man standing at the crest.</p><p>Geralt feels the medallion purring.</p><p>He draws Roach to a halt despite her unease, slowly sitting back in the saddle as he looks up the hill.</p><p>The landscape here is rolling, the hills high enough that the witcher is a good distance away - far enough that he is merely a small figure against the sky of windblown clouds. Even still, he is intimidating, a dark blot on the silver backdrop... a dark and awful blot on the natural order.</p><p>As Geralt watches, the man watches him in return.</p><p>The wind changes, and the stench of blood is suddenly so much stronger, and Geralt <i>snarls</i> with it. Roach jerks, backs off, calms only slightly when Geralt croons to her.</p><p>He doesn't take his eyes off the witcher at the top of the hill.</p><p>Finally, the witcher moves, turning away.</p><p>Geralt stays put as the witcher walks back down the opposite side of the hill, heading for the plumes of smoke and the camp about its source.</p><p>"Walk on, Roach," he murmurs, nudging her with his heels, and she snorts in clear protest, but complies.</p><p>She always does.</p><p>- - -</p><p>The camp is a simple thing, altogether - there's a tent set up just above where the seagrass fades into sand, on solid ground. Below it, on a flat slab of rock that looks as though it's been in this spot for centuries, the campfire is set up; above it, a spit, on which something Geralt recognizes as a harpy's torso roasts.</p><p>The harpy's wings and talons and head all rest a short distance away, strung up from a rack of wooden poles and thick metal spikes - alongside countless other trophies that churn Geralt's stomach to gaze at.</p><p>The witcher is waiting beside the fire when Geralt rounds the bend; he watches with impassive eyes as Geralt dismounts, tying Roach's reins to a bit of driftwood and patting her flank in farewell.</p><p>Although the witcher motions him closer, Geralt does not come just yet.</p><p>He is gazing around, taking in the tableau about him.</p><p>There are three of the spiked racks, one full, one nearly there, the other empty as of yet apart from the harpy's components. Scraped-clean skulls, sections of scales still linked together by the skin below, and clusters of flight feathers tied off with twine hang from the full racks. At the base of one of the racks is a chest; Geralt rises higher on his toes for an instant to glimpse inside.</p><p>Teeth - canines, incisors, molars... all cleaned and drilled with holds at the base, no doubt meant to be strung on jewelry or woven onto finery.</p><p>Geralt's gaze wanders closer to where shoreline meets riverbank.</p><p>He counts five spears laying propped upon a stone, all tipped with barbed heads of silver and iron alike - </p><p>"Iron for weight, silver for effect," comes the witcher's voice; it's a rough sound, more of a rasp than Geralt's own deep burr.</p><p>Geralt turns his head, fixes him with a stare... looks back to the spears.</p><p>The handles are notched where one would hold to throw, wrapped in thin rope - no doubt to reel them back in when they've sunken into their target. </p><p>Biting back the nausea deep in his gut, Geralt shakes his head, finally allows himself to take in the pile of fishing nets beside the stone. He has no idea how many there are, and what's worse, he has no idea how many are along the shore in the other direction, away from where he found Jaskier.</p><p>
  <i>Jaskier.</i>
</p><p>"You're hunting for sport," Geralt says, abrupt in the quiet of the death camp. He turns to the other witcher, who is merely... merely sitting there, as if he has no fucking care in the world. "These aren't contract kills."</p><p>The witcher shrugs. "I have buyers," he said. "Does that not constitute a contract?"</p><p>Geralt scoffs, paces toward the rack on which the harpy's head rests, speared through the hollow of the jaw, still wet with blood. A fresh kill. He meets its death-glazed eyes. "The harpies, at least, are hostile - the waters are safer without them," he admits, though it pains him. "The other things, though - the sirens, the mermaids, and what else? What else have you dredged up from the depths to sell as <i>exotic?"</i></p><p>"You protest the killings of the sirens?" the witcher says, and his voice is dry, mocking. "When countless ships have been wrecked traveling from port to port thanks to their song? Witchers are meant to kill monsters, Butcher, have you forgotten?"</p><p>He bristles at the realization that the other thing knows his name.</p><p>"To kill monsters," he replies, turning on his heel to face the witcher, "not to hunt them for your own fucking benefit - for <i>amusement."</i></p><p>The witcher laughs then, and Geralt finds he hates the sound - it's wrong, inhuman... "You think it's amusement?" he spits, and, for the first time, Geralt looks at him - really <i>looks.</i></p><p>Deep brown hair, bright green eyes... all normal, as normal as a witcher can be.</p><p>That isn't what has distrust stirring low in Geralt's gut.</p><p>It's not the panther medallion laying against the witcher's chest, either, although he always has loathed the School of the Cat - cruel and murdering bastards, the lot of them.</p><p>No, it's the way the witcher's eyes lack any sort of light, any emotion whatsoever.</p><p>For all the times it's been said that witchers cannot feel, Geralt knows the opposite - knows that what people are so determined to classify as a disbelief to feel is the overwhelming presence of emotion, emotion so soul-crushing that the only fucking option is to cast it aside.</p><p>This man... he's seen things the likes of which Geralt is certain he can only imagine.</p><p>That much, he can understand, and yet -</p><p>"You've forgotten," Geralt says, his hand straying to the hilt of his sword where it's slung across his back. He watches the witcher go tense.</p><p>"Forgotten?"</p><p>"How to care. Why you were made. Why you hunt."</p><p>The witcher <i>laughs</i> then.</p><p>It's a bitter sound.</p><p>"Why should I give a damn whether people get killed in their sleep by the beasts?" he asks, giving a disinterested shrug that makes Geralt's chest grow tight with anger. "They've cast me aside - you know just as well as the next what that's like. What good does it really do you, helping them? They're not <i>worth</i> my blood."</p><p>Geralt scoffs then, fingers wrapped around the hilt of his sword, although he doesn't draw it, not yet. "As ungrateful as they may be, I need their coin in order to survive," he points out dryly, although his gaze is straying to the trophy racks around him even as he speaks.</p><p>It seems the witcher has found his own way of getting around that little necessity.</p><p>As if reading his mind, the witcher laughs again, gesturing to the tableau about them. "Why hunt for things that can fight back for mere pennies when I can net helpless things whose scales sell for thousands?"</p><p>The venom in his tone makes Geralt bristle, and he draws his sword, relishing in the way the witcher tenses, eyes dropping to the silver blade. "The world is growing barren because of bastards like you."</p><p>"The world is growing barren because of the creatures I kill, do you <i>really</i> think a few mermaids here and there will make a difference?" he asks.</p><p>Geralt feels himself go rigid.</p><p>The witcher's eyes alight with malice. "Oh," he murmurs. "Oh, you're here for one of your little monster friends, aren't you? Tell me, Butcher, did you weep when it died?"</p><p>He's seeing <i>red.</i></p><p>"I think you've done enough talking," Geralt snarls, and his voice is deep, raw... he takes a sick satisfaction in the way the other witcher's eyes flash bright when he lunges forward - in the guttural noise the bastard makes when Geralt's blade sinks into the hollow of his ribs.</p><p>The witcher jolts, grabbing for the base of the sword where it's sunken deep into his flesh - eyes wide, blown-out, <i>afraid.</i> Geralt resists the urge to <i>purr</i> when he smells blood burst into the air. "No better than me," he breathes, and his voice is already breaking, clogging up with the blood welling into his throat. "Killing a dying kind..."</p><p>"If you think I'm anything akin to you, you're wrong," Geralt says, low and bitter. He takes another step forward, grip firm on the hilt of the sword, pushing it further into the bastard's trembling frame; the stench of blood grows stronger, and his eyes drop from the other's to watch as the crimson fluid spills out around the silver blade. It's satisfying in the most vicious of ways, and the wolf deep inside him <i>roars.</i> "You, you kill for sport, for your own sick humor..."</p><p>"As if you've never laughed when you watch a monster die," the man chokes out; his hands are sliced and bleeding where he's clinging to the blade, and yet he does nothing to fight. Already, the light is fading from his eyes. Geralt knows it's only a matter of minutes now.</p><p>He bares his teeth in a wicked sneer, sharp edges glinting in the overcast glow. "I'll laugh when your head rolls."</p><p>A sharp twist of his hands is all it takes to rend flesh and bone, twisting deep within the wound; the witcher's eyes flash, and then go blank. Geralt rips the sword away and lets the bastard fall.</p><p>- - -</p><p>Geralt couldn't bear the stifling aura of the witcher's camp another second longer, and so he had slung the corpse up across Roach's haunches, soothing the uneasy mare with <i>axii</i> and mounting up again; he had traveled only until the blood-reek from the camp faded away before dismounting in a little clearing.</p><p>The fire he'd lit is small, burning from a handful of sticks and dry leaves and seagrass, but it'll do the job. Geralt kneels at its side until it flares its brightest, and then he stands, crossing to where he'd laid the witcher's corpse upon the grass. </p><p>It's sobering, seeing another of his kind so still and lifeless... he knows full well he might be in the same position before long.</p><p>He refuses to let it happen before he's saved his merman.</p><p>- - -</p><p>He catches the witcher's blood in an empty vial when he cuts off his head.</p><p>He thinks he should feel something, but really, he's gone numb.</p><p>- - -</p><p>The handful of herbs he drops into the little tin pot turn the witcher's blood a deep violet when the heat of the fire rises.</p><p>It smells like death itself, but Geralt pushes through, adding another pinch of wolfsbane.</p><p>The words he speaks are in a language long forgotten, one memorialized only in the darkest of mages' scrolls.</p><p>He sits back to wait.</p><p>- - -</p><p>It takes another hour for the potion to become green.</p><p>Clenching his jaw, Geralt draws his dagger and sets it to his palm.</p><p>He curses aloud at the sharp pain, setting the dagger aside and holding his bleeding hand aloft above the tin.</p><p>He watches as three drops of his blood fall in, and speaks, low.</p><p>- - -</p><p>Twenty minutes later, the potion goes black, and Geralt whispers another bit of the spell, taking it off the fire.</p><p>It reeks of toxins, but he knows better than to doubt himself.</p><p>Murmuring reassurance to Roach when she gives a skeptical snort, he pours it into an empty vial, corking it with a sigh.</p><p>He mounts up again, soothing his mare with <i>axii</i> and spurring her into a gallop.</p><p>He can only pray he's not too late.</p><p>- - -</p><p>He returns to the lagoon close to nightfall.</p><p>Jaskier is laid across the stones, just like Geralt left him - motionless, his head down and eyes closed.</p><p>For an instant, Geralt's heart siezes, and he thinks he's too late.</p><p>"Jaskier," he calls, voice tight in his throat, as he drops from Roach's back. "Jaskier, are you - "</p><p>The merman stirs, lifts his head, eyes hazy and distant. Geralt is relieved.</p><p>Breathing out a sigh, he comes to the water's edge, already taking out the little vial of shadows. He kneels down next to his merman, looking him over once again. He looks... not great. Pallid, tail weak, eyes covered in a thin sheen.</p><p>He looks like he's dying.</p><p>"You came back," Jaskier croaks. It says something for how weak he is that he makes no attempt to push himself up, instead merely laying there, arms folded upon the stones, his body slack and hanging heavy in the water.</p><p>Geralt's heart aches.</p><p>"I told you I would," he replies softly; without thinking, he reaches out, brushing aside the creature's dark hair. Jaskier leans into his touch immediately, and Geralt allows them just a moment to rest like this, Jaskier's cheek in his cupped palm. "I told you I would."</p><p>The merman is quiet, drawing in a tremulous breath. Finally, Geralt draws away, but not before brushing his thumb along the curve of his cheekbone, a little bit of reassurance while he can still offer it. "I have... I have a cure, I think," he mumbles, showing Jaskier the vial in his palm. "It's ancient magic, it's not - I shouldn't be doing this, but..."</p><p>Jaskier is looking upon him with obvious confusion, something almost like fear in his eyes. "What did you do?" he asks faintly.</p><p>Geralt pauses then, lowering his gaze. "The witcher... the one who set the net..."</p><p>He trails off there, but from the way Jaskier's breath catches, that's all he needed to say.</p><p>"I couldn't let you die," he says quietly, and hopes that's explanation enough.</p><p>Quiet, the merman looks away, his tail stirring just slightly within the water. "Okay," he murmurs at last. "What - what do I have to do...?"</p><p>It's here that Geralt truly hesitates, gaze panning over Jaskier, taking in the wounds across his frame, some more open than others, some still red and angry and raw. "Three drops of blood," he replies at length. "That'll finish the spell."</p><p>Jaskier nods, though apprehension is evident in his frame. "Okay," he repeats.</p><p>He sounds drained.</p><p>- - -</p><p>Geralt hates himself when Jaskier flinches away from the slice of the dagger across his palm.</p><p>He hates himself when he holds his trembling merman's hand above the vial, counting one, two, three drops of silver blood as they fall into the darkness.</p><p>He hates himself when he whispers the last of the spell.</p><p>He hates himself when the potion turns even darker, looking like the void of the sea held captive in the vial.</p><p>He hates himself when he tips his merman's chin back and holds the vial to his lips.</p><p>He hates himself when his merman gags at the taste, recoils from the stench and flavor and texture on his tongue.</p><p>He hates himself when his merman goes limp after he's swallowed the last vile drop, unconscious with the spell's completion.</p><p>- - -</p><p>Geralt sits by his side for three days after.</p><p>Jaskier doesn't rouse once, as he'd expected.</p><p>With nothing else to do, he merely sits, and watches, and waits.</p><p>He watches as the wounds begin to heal.</p><p>He watches as the color begins to return to his merman's skin.</p><p>He watches as some of the scales on his beautiful blue tail darken.</p><p>By the evening of the second day, there are patches of darkness across Jaskier's tail, mottled and varied, tinting the mangled fan at the end a deep navy, where it had once been pastel.</p><p>Geralt knows that his merman's eyes will be darker, too - deeper blue, always tainted by the memory of what happened.</p><p>He can only hope his merman won't loathe him for what he's done.</p><p>- - -</p><p>It's the evening of the third day before Jaskier begins to rouse.</p><p>By then, Geralt has only stirred to bring food to Roach, but even that's been a rare thing, as Roach is more than capable of wandering the few feet required to get some fresh grass when the fancy strikes.</p><p>Really, all Geralt has been doing is... waiting.</p><p>What else is he meant to do?</p><p>It's because of his unwavering stare that he sees the exact moment Jaskier stirs, his thin frame heaving with a breath that's deeper than normal.</p><p>Geralt slips from the rock upon which he's been resting to kneel in the water at his merman's side, watching him with hopeful eyes. "Jaskier," he says quietly, and the merman blinks his eyes open, quite clearly dazed.</p><p>Jaskier says nothing at first, as if he's taking inventory of his senses as they return, one by one. He gives a low, uncertain sound when Geralt reaches to lay a hand upon the back of his shoulder, where there had once been a raw and angry wound - now, he's touching new skin, even the scarring process helped along by the potion.</p><p>"It's been three days," Geralt goes on, in that same low and steady tone. He lets Jaskier awaken at his own pace, watching as the merman tests first his arms, and then his tail, craning back over his shoulder - and it's then that the merman's eyes go wide.</p><p>Geralt winces internally.</p><p>"Part of the magic," he says, offering the simplest explanation for the black and navy scales covering his merman's figure. "I'm sorry, Jaskier, I - I didn't know what else to do..."</p><p>Still, Jaskier is quiet. Geralt is privately relieved when his merman manages to prop himself up on his elbows, tail swaying slowly in the water. No doubt he's still weak, disoriented after so long unconscious - it'll take time for him to rouse, but... he's alive.</p><p>Jaskier is alive.</p><p>"The scales, they're... that's permanent, isn't it?" the merman says at last. He doesn't sound angry, for which Geralt is grateful; if anything, he sounds resigned.</p><p>The witcher nods, asking quietly, "Do you want me to help you into deeper water? Test out your tail...?"</p><p>Jaskier glances up to him, then away, nods once.</p><p>Geralt is just as careful as ever when he scoops him up in his arms.</p><p>- - -</p><p>The moon is high overhead, casting a silvery glow upon the rippling surface of the water and the leaves of the overarching palms.</p><p>Geralt has long since given up on keeping track of time.</p><p>Jaskier has spent the past few hours swimming about the deeper part of the lagoon, diving down below and rising back up with increasing haste, something that has relief clogging the back of Geralt's throat as he watches from his position on the shore.</p><p>At last, Jaskier surfaces out in the center of the lagoon, shaking his hair from his eyes and looking across to Geralt for the first time since he's began. Geralt is still, head tilted, the faintest of smiles on his face.</p><p>His heart swells when Jaskier motions to him. "Get in," he calls softly, and there's something in his voice that Geralt cannot quite place. "Surely you don't need all that armor on just for a swim?"</p><p>He doubts he'll ever be able to deny his merman a thing again, and so he stands, stripping himself of the heavy plate and tunic below. His trousers, he chooses to leave on, more for modesty's sake than anything. Leaving everything in a little pile in the sand, he wades into the lagoon, the chill of the water nowhere near enough to deter him.</p><p>Jaskier drifts up to him with ease once he's deep enough to tread water, and Geralt stills, glancing over him once again now that he's awake and bright-eyed. He has only a second to realize that he was right - his merman's eyes are a darker shade of blue, dulled by the magic - before Jaskier is draping cautious arms around his shoulders, all but flush against him.</p><p>Geralt goes rigid; it's instinct alone that drives him to reach for the curve of his merman's waist below the water, to set cautious hands upon his skin. He can feel the scales at the top of his tail here, could trace the v of their pattern if he wanted...</p><p>... and <i>gods,</i> does he want to.</p><p>"Thank you," Jaskier is saying, soft and wary. He glances down when Geralt's hands settle upon him, but there's no hesitation in his frame; instead, he presses a little closer, draws Geralt closer to him.</p><p>The witcher can feel that sleek and powerful tail working just beneath his hands.</p><p>"I would have fought for you a thousand times over, had I been given the chance," Geralt tells him softly, swallowing around the lump forming in his throat. Breathing in, he can smell the salt on Jaskier's skin. "I wouldn't have let you die."</p><p>The other's face falls then, just slightly, and Geralt's heart falters when Jaskier turns his head away. "I thought you were done with me, all those years ago," he admits quietly. "I waited for you every night, I - I thought, maybe..."</p><p>Geralt cuts him off then, lifting a hand from beneath the water to cup his merman's cheek. "I shouldn't have left you then," he tells him softly, brushing a gentle thumb over the little smattering of scales that mark Jaskier's cheekbone - pale, nearly invisible. He only knows they're there because he's seen them glint in the starlight. "I'll be trying to make up for it until the end of my days..."</p><p>Jaskier is leaning into his hand, deep blue eyes locked with his own. There's sadness plain in them, but something else, too, something almost like happiness, glinting there. "What made you come back?" he asks quietly.</p><p>"The witcher, he is - ... was... hunting for sport," he sighs, trying not to think too hard about the way Jaskier is far, far closer to him than <i>friends</i> have any right to be. "There were trinkets at markets... siren scales and the like... I was scared for you. When I saw you tangled in that net, I thought, at first, I had been too late."</p><p>The merman's gaze seems to soften then. Geralt can feel the water moving, stirred up by the steady movement of his tail beneath the surface; he can feel the strength of him under his palm, still resting there on the curve of his waist. For a long, painful minute, he is quiet, those beautiful eyes dropping to the surface of the water between them.</p><p>Geralt doesn't speak a word.</p><p>"Swim with me," Jaskier says at last, and before Geralt can react, the merman has let go of him, has dived away with a sharp snap of his tail, leaving him treading water in a bewildered sort of daze.</p><p>He only remembers the meaning of the word "swim" when he feels a teasing hand close about his ankle from below; Jaskier pulls him under, and Geralt is in motion.</p><p>- - -</p><p>Geralt doesn't bother to make a guess as to how long they spend like that, playing in the lagoon - Jaskier ducking and weaving and diving, Geralt very nearly as agile, Jaskier all teasing grabs and tugs and pulls, Geralt all firm holds on newly-healed arms that twist free of his grasp within seconds every time.</p><p>At last, Geralt's endurance grows thin, and he motions Jaskier off with a muffled grunt of laughter, retreating to the stone near the shoreline. Sitting here, he can dangle his legs in the water, giving Jaskier something to rest against when he swims over to follow. "I'm glad you have the strength to play endlessly," he says, voice rough, "but I'm not quite that nimble."</p><p>Jaskier is smiling as he wraps a gentle hand around Geralt's ankle, looking up at him with a glint in his eye. His cheeks are flushed, and he's panting a little, the thin gills on the sides of his throat working along with his mouth to draw in air - no doubt he overdid himself, but Geralt can't find it within himself to reprimand him, not when he's here, happy, alive... "Thank you for joining me," he murmurs, leaning his head against Geralt's knee with a quiet sigh.</p><p>"Of course," Geralt says, low. He reaches down to run his hand through Jaskier's hair, wet and salt-stiff, but no less soft for it. The way his merman leans into the touch makes his breath come short. This is... this is dangerous, this is wrong, and yet... "Jaskier."</p><p>The merman glances up then, lips parting around a nearly-silent, "Yes?"</p><p>Geralt is quiet for a beat, holding his gaze as he struggles to finds the words.</p><p>Witchers are... not unfeeling, no - they feel far, far too much... but words, expressions, conversations... such things are best left to humans, Geralt has found, and yet...</p><p>... and yet, never before - not with Yennefer, nor with anyone else - has he ever wanted so sorely to make an effort.</p><p>"I'll stay," he begins at length, letting his fingertips stray down to trace along those faint scales at his merman's cheekbones, "if you want... there's - there have to be houses on the coast..."</p><p>Realization dawns in Jaskier's eyes just as Geralt's face begins to flush red. "Geralt," he whispers.</p><p>"Even if I can't buy one, I can camp," he goes on regardless, fumbling with the words even as he manages to force them out. He turns his head, looking to the ocean out past the sandbars. "I can't leave you again, Jaskier, I don't - I don't want to see your scales in a market one day..."</p><p>"Geralt," the merman breaks in, and Geralt falters, goes silent.</p><p>He remains still as Jaskier reaches up to take the hand that's cupping his cheek, as Jaskier weaves their fingers together and squeezes gently.</p><p>He follows the pull on his hand when Jaskier tugs him down, something not quite like fear making his breath come short.</p><p>He's bent over now, leaning down toward the water; Jaskier's other hand comes up to cup the back of his neck, and Geralt stills as the merman's forehead rests against his own.</p><p>"Jaskier," he murmurs, movements cautious when he raises his hand to cup his merman's cheek once more. "I can't leave you again..."</p><p>"Then don't," he whispers in reply. "Stay here with me."</p><p>Geralt tries to speak - finds that he can't.</p><p>He blinks to clear away the tears in his eyes, settles for closing them entirely; shivers when he feels his merman's breath ghosting over his parted lips.</p><p>It's as the moon reaches its crest that he tips his head to close the scant distance between them, lips meeting Jaskier's own in a featherlight kiss.</p><p>It's as the seaside breeze ghosts across Geralt's skin that Jaskier kisses him back.</p><p>- - -</p><p>Geralt slips back into the water before long, his merman cradled close to his chest.</p><p>Jaskier is a warm and heavy weight in his arms, tail slim enough to fit between Geralt's thighs as they kiss there in the gently-rippling waves.</p><p>When the witcher grows weary of treading water, Jaskier lays back in the shallows with ease, and Geralt crowds close above him, their lips scarcely ever parting.</p><p>After all, Geralt has nigh on twelve years to make up for.</p><p>- - -</p><p>It's as dawn begins to break, and the morning sun turns the blue waters green, that they finally part.</p><p>Jaskier drifts off to Geralt's gentle touch - fingertips tracing along the darker patches on his tail, following their outlines, soothing away the residual ache from their frolicking the night before.</p><p>Sitting in the shallows, watching his merman doze, Geralt finally lets himself put a name to the thing that's been swelling within his heart all these years, to the thing that made him cross the Continent to keep Jaskier safe.</p><p>He turns his gaze to the sun as it rises, watching the deep blue of the waves beyond their haven turn a bright and crystalline teal with the golden rays.</p><p>He can feel Jaskier breathing beneath his hands, can feel the subtle shifts of the water around him from the slow wave of the merman's tail.</p><p>The memory of the witcher slain gnaws at the back of his mind, and yet, he pushes it aside with a deep inhale, breathing in his merman's scent, breathing in the coastal morning.</p><p>Things won't be easy - he's nowhere near fool enough to believe that - but here, now...</p><p>... he decides that things might just be okay.</p><p>After all, a love that crosses the earth and spans a decade cannot falter.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Hope you loves enjoy.</p><p>&lt;3</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>After approximately an eternity of uploading this hellfiend to Tumblr, it's finally complete, and I can post it here!</p><p>Comments / criticism are always, always welcome.</p><p>Tumblr: gravitational813</p><p>&lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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